


a record of the wreckage of my life

by portraitofemmy



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death Fix, Depression, Emotional Infidelity, Extended Metaphors, Fix-It, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Not s04e13 No Better To Be Safe Than Sorry Compliant, Post-Season/Series 04, Quentin Coldwater is a Bad Boyfriend to Alice Quinn, Quentin Doesn’t Die, Temporary Character Death, The Underworld, Well He Does But He Fixes It, misuse of Greek mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 05:37:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19192837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portraitofemmy/pseuds/portraitofemmy
Summary: “You still want to climb out of here?”“Yes,” Quentin says immediately.“It’s going to be hard,” Penny warns, his gaze weirdly intense and serious.“God, yeah, I figured it would be,” Quentin mutters, squirming out of Penny’s personal space. “Everything from pretty much every mythology ever says it’s a pain in the ass.”AKA The One In Which Quentin Coldwater Saves His Goddamn Self





	a record of the wreckage of my life

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve already written my ‘Quentin doesn’t die because that plot is ridiculous’ story, which I stand by. This fic is me saying ‘Okay, so he has to explode in the mirror realm, now what? How do we fix it?’ I hope you like the answer I came up with. As with many fics in this fandom, this piece frankly discusses suicidal ideation and attempts. Please, if this is going to trigger you, take care with yourself. 
> 
> Neverending gratitude to [saltandpepperbox](https://saltandpepperbox.tumblr.com/) for everything she does, not the least of which being so much beta work it’s practically a part time copy editing gig.

Everything in the Underworld feels grey. It feels muted. It feels–

Well, it feels like the worst bit of a depressive episode, honestly. That low point in the spiral where everything feels disconnected, like all of the color and feeling have been leached out of the world, living only objects behind. Bed. Coffee. Book. Razor.

Except now the grayness isn’t inside him, it’s in everything else. Even the hot chocolate in his hands feels muted. It doesn’t smell particularly good, doesn’t smell much at all honestly. It’s warm to the touch but not warming, completely lacking the cathartic feeling of hot ceramic seeping heat into your bones. 

“What did I do?” Quentin’s voice cracks, hands shaking over his mug of cocoa, and he’s never felt so out of control, not staring Niffin Alice in the face, or facing the shadeless version of his best friend, not with the monster’s hands closed on his neck.

“What do you think you did?” Penny asks, detached and overly-patient in that fucking therapist way that Quentin has always, _always_ hated, and it’s even worse coming from fucking _Penny_ of all people. There’s never been a version of Penny who had anything resembling patience when it came to Quentin. 

“This is the part where I can’t lie, right? Where my whole life is revealed?” The shaking in his hands doesn’t stop, but when he pushes them against his knees he can’t really feel it as much. _Is Eliot alive?_ he wonders, and doesn’t know how to give voice to the thought, not staring into Penny’s pleasantly bland face. _Did Alice and 23 make it out of the mirror world? Did it give my life meaning, what I did? Did it do any good? Did I just break something else?_

“It only matters if it’s revealed to yourself.”

“That sounds... appropriately metaphorical and unhelpful.” It’s like an echo overlaid, Eliot’s response when Quentin had explained the mosaic: _The beauty of all life? That sounds appropriately vague and impossible._ Quentin swallows around the hurt, and squashes it down. That’s _his,_ and he’s not– not ready to give it to the fucking Library, not– after everything the Library has cost him.

So he spills the stuff everyone already knows instead, the dirty fucking laundry that anyone who’s gotten close enough to him to see past the awkwardness already pieced together. Penny accepts it like a secret, like there’s any chance this is _news_ , and gives another fucking patient smile. “I can see we’re going to need the deluxe package. It’s fine, I expected that.”

“So, what, you’re just– going to answer my questions about my whole life for me?” Quentin sniffs, because that seems too easy.

“No,” Penny says, standing up. “You need to answer them for yourself.”

Everything in the Underworld is so fucking grey, shiny and polished and hollow, and their footsteps echo as Penny leads Quentin out the little corridor off his office. They take three left turns and then a right, which Quentin tracks out of habit because it’s not like he expects to just be allowed to wander around down here. 

Another left turn, and they’re in a long hallway with a door at the end. Penny stops at the mouth of the hallway, still with that same weird expression on his face and Quentin stops too. “Go on,” Penny gestures. “I’ll meet you after, and we can see where to go from there.”

With a weird sense of foreboding, Quentin looks at the single shiny black door, then back at Penny. “What’s in there?”

“Answers,” Penny says cryptically, and Quentin narrows his eyes at him. 

“Is this some Star Wars shit where I have to fight the dark side of the force and realize it’s me all along?”

There’s a flash, just a hint, of irritation in Penny’s bland features, which makes Quentin feel oddly delighted. _Jesus, nerd, just go through the fucking door_ , he can practically hear, but all Penny says is, “I can’t tell you what you’ll find. You need to find out on your own.”

The door seems unassuming enough, but Quentin can’t shake the feeling that he’s walking towards something unknowably dangerous. Penny stays behind, hands tucked into his pants pockets, and the walk down the halway feels like it lasts a lifetime. He stops in front of the door, and he feels nervy, like he’s got too much energy contained in his body for this human skin to hold. Looking back over his shoulder, he can see Penny still standing at the other end of that impossibly long hallway.

“If you make me watch my own funeral I’m going to haunt you. Other-you. All other yous,” he calls back.

“Just go through the door, Coldwater.” It’s maybe the closest to irritation this Penny can manage now, and Quentin feels vindicated. He’s smiling when he reaches out, pushing his hand into the shiny black door. It’s cool to the touch, and swings open easily, beckoning him onwards.

It’s underwhelming, all told, to step out into another shiny, grey, dull Underworld room. The most exciting feature of this room is the pillars, and the door he just stepped through, which seems to be a frame standing alone in the middle of the empty room.

“-the fuck?” Quentin whispers to himself, because that’s... fucking weird, even for the Underworld. When he pushes his hand against the door, it stays firmly closed. Apparently this is a one way only kind of trip. 

“I didn’t sign up for some Labyrinth shit in here!” He calls out into the empty room, like maybe that will make the Library be less weird and full of its own bullshit. His voice echoes in the vast room, and he sighs. Of course. Not even death could be easy.

The door yields no more answers, nor does any disembodied voice ring down in response to his protests, so Quentin sighs and looks around. The empty room stretches out in every direction, no real indicator of a path forward. 

“Am I supposed to just pick a direction and go?” He calls again, because not talking feels weirder than talking to whoever’s undoubtedly watching him right now.

There’s no answer, but he’s not really surprised by that. Okay. Random Underworld Labyrinth, totally a reasonable thing to do after dying in an explosion of magic at the seam of the worlds. He picks the direction opposite of where the door is facing, just to be contrary, and starts walking. It’s really boring, quite frankly, literally no texture in the floor, the repeated pattern of the columns around him offer no interesting variations. 

He wishes, sharply, that he wasn’t walking alone. Unbidden, a wave of sorrow rises in his chest, thinking of Julia, who’d been by his side the first time he stepped into the underworld. His own Jane Chatwin, no matter how far they drifted something always pulled them back together. He’d promised to be her sidekick, hadn’t he, and she’d helped him appease the Monster even though she barely knew Eliot at all. 

_I never got to say goodbye to her,_ he thinks, and it hurts, so he pushes it down. Tries to. It doesn’t really stick, walking through the emptiness of the stupid echoey room. He never got to say goodbye to Margo, either, or– 

Eliot. 

God, Quentin hopes he’s alive. His life for Eliot’s might be a fair trade, except–

_Except if he’s dead, maybe I’ll get to see him again._ It’s a traitorous thought, and it makes him feel so physically sick that he needs to stop and double over for a minute, breathe through it. Months and months and months of trying to keep Eliot’s body alive, no, Quentin doesn’t want him to be dead. He just–

Never got to see him again. _I never got to see him again._

“This sucks!” Quentin calls out into the echoey room around him. “Was the whole point of this just to make me be alone with my thoughts, because that’s not _fucking fair._ ”

Predictably, no one answers. Fuck the Library, honestly.

It’s tempting to just sit down on the floor and stay there in protest, but... there’s got to be a point to all of this. He’s not going to find it if he gives up already. _Pussy up,_ he thinks, and imagines Margo threatening various types of bodily harm at him if he doesn’t get his act together. It’s surprisingly motivating.

Except maybe the outburst did something after all, because he’s been walking again for barely 10 minutes when he becomes aware of the feeling of not being alone. There’s someone else in this room, he can sense it, just see a figure on the edge of his vision. He adjusts course towards it, because, well. He’s already dead, what’s the worst that can happen?

But something in Quentin knows who the figure is, puts it together even before he’s close enough to really see. He knows instinctively, in his heart. How could you ever forget the person who raised you, who taught you to ride a bike, who read to you every night, who drove you home from the hospital every single time you needed it.

Oh, this isn’t _fair_ , this is worse than force ghosts. Quentin would take confronting his own darkness over the person he failed most. 

“Hey Curly Q,” Ted Coldwater says, and Quentin–

Runs to him, childlike, reaching out to hug his father. Quentin half expects his arms to pass through him, expects it to be an illusion, but he’s solid. He _smells right_ , and hugs right, when he grips Quentin roughly and shakes him a little. His father had always hugged like he wasn’t sure how to do it, didn’t really know how to show affection in an embrace but tried anyway.

“Dad,” Quentin chokes out, letting go to step back and look closely. “Are you– is... Is this really you, or just something pulled from my memories?”

“I don’t really know, I guess. I feel like me. I remember things you wouldn’t know, but does that prove anything?”

Quentin’s head hurts, and hot tears well up behind his eyes. “I don’t know,” he admits, because being dead doesn’t make any sense. “How are you here? You’re not just... waiting, are you? It’s been months.”

“No, no, I’ve found my place. I think I’m here to help you find yours, then I’ll just go back to where I was.” He smiles, bracingly, and he’s always tried to be optimistic for Quentin, always tried to find the lightness that Quentin couldn’t find for himself. “It’s so good to see you, buddy. You should be older, but– I have missed you.”

_Should I be older?_ Quentin wonders. He feels ancient. He feels brand new, just born, like a child holding his father’s hands. He’s 10 years old in his heart and 87 in his memory and 25 in his soul, and he’s died 40 times. 41. Tried to die more times than that. It’s amazing he made it this far, isn’t it?

“I miss you too, Dad,” he mutters, voice wet, and the truth of it lodges under his sternum, painful and thick. “I’m so sorry.”

“What are you sorry for, Curly Q?” his father asks, resting a hand on his shoulder. It feels solid, the weight of it like a pressure release, and it’s a little easier to breathe. 

“I wasn’t there when you died.” It’s hard to admit, a wound that’s still fresh, still _scraped raw_ by the Monster. It tastes like frozen peas and broken planes, and the feeling of unreality setting in, the beginnings of the dissociation he’d been stuck in for months. “I should have been there for you and I wasn’t. I wanted to be. I’m so sorry.”

A dark shadow passes over his father’s face, a brief moment of hurt, and that more than anything makes Quentin feel like this is real. A memory or illusion pulled from his brain would placate him, but the man in front of him acts like he feels things all his own. “I wondered where you were, but– You told me the last time I saw you, that you were on a quest. I knew you were busy.”

Busy being fucking dragged around by the Monster inhabiting the shell of his best friend, busy trapped inside his own mind, busy being _Brian_. But even if the quest had gone to plan, even if Eliot _hadn’t_ shot the Monster and the McAllisters had never shown up, Quentin wouldn’t have been able to be there for his father, would he? He would have been trapped in the castle at the end of the world, playing the same games with the same Monster. Just with maybe a little less of other people’s blood, and a lot more of his own.

“Yeah, the quest,” He mutters, heartsore, because that fucking quest. That fucking quest which cost him his father and his son and _Eliot_ , cost Julia her godhood and started them on this path which would cost him his life.

“You finished it, though, right?” His father asks, and he’s forcing cheerfulness back again, bracingly trying to be strong for Quentin. Still. Even now. “Magic’s back, right?”

“We were trying to save the world,” Quentin says painfully. “We were trying to _fix_ things, and instead we made them made them _worse._ Julia’s– it _took_ something from her, something I couldn’t help her get back. You died, and I _never_ got to see you again. Eliot– Everything got so much worse. The people who love me end up _hurt_ , because I break everything I touch.”

“That sounds like your mother talking,” Ted says, and he sounds bitter. Quentin, child of divorce that he is, knows how this conversation will go and tries to side step it.

“But she’s not wrong, though. Whenever I try to make things better I just leave them more screwed up than they were to begin with. I break _everything._ ”

“Quentin,” his father says, and it’s always a little bit of a shock to hear his father use his full name like that. It makes him pay attention a little more, in spite of himself. “Are you trying to tell me your son never broke things?”

“No,” Quentin says, weakly. “He broke things all the time. Most of the time he didn’t mean to, but sometimes he’d break stuff on purpose, because he needed our attention and didn’t know how to ask. Eliot used to–”

He stutters to a stop, then, because well. He’d kind of left this part out, when recounting the story of his other life to his father. He’s spoken a lot of Arielle and Teddy, and kind of talked around Eliot. It was still too fresh a wounded then, or so he’d been telling himself, but really– 

Really it was too precious. Too important. The memory of learning to love someone the way he’d loved Eliot in that other life was something he kept wrapped up and tucked in the space beneath his ribs. It was something he needed to protect, because even if it wasn’t something Eliot wanted to carry into this life, Quentin couldn’t just–

It wasn’t something he could just throw away. But was hiding it a different way of ignoring it, the same as saying it didn’t matter? It mattered, and if he’s going to be dead, he needs to look at his actual life, not just the bits that felt good.

“– Eliot used to make him fix things he broke, once he was old enough. He said it was important that Teddy learn it’s okay to break things, as long as you fix them.”

Quentin makes himself meet his father’s eyes, who’s looking at him evenly. Quentin wonders, suddenly, how much he already knows. How much omniscience did death give you? “He sounds like a good father.”

“He was. He was a good partner, too,” Quentin breathes out, and it takes everything in him not to hide from this. “That’s broken now too, I guess.”

“Well,” Ted shrugs, tilting his head. “Can you fix it?”

“I’m dead,” Quentin says, and feels the desperate truth of it. He’s breathing, but it feels mechanical, like it’s something his body’s doing out of habit. He’s not entirely sure he has a pulse. “I think maybe it’s a little late for that.”

“Maybe.” His father’s face pulls tight, and Quentin feels it again, that surge have having failed him. “I hate that you’re dead, buddy, this is never what I wanted for you.”

“I know.” He always had, after every attempt, once the fog cleared he’d been nothing but acutely aware of how much pain he’d caused. It was hard to hold on to, but he always remembered eventually.

“I used to fight with your mother all the time about it, about you breaking things. I kept telling her to let it go, but she couldn’t. Then you showed me your magic and fixed that plane, and Quentin, I swear it’s like I won every argument we’d ever had retroactively. Because you’re good at fixing things too.”

“I am,” Quentin agrees, and feels laughter bubbling up for the first time since he died. “I found out not that long ago, it’s actually the thing I’m best at. Minor Mendings. Helping things remember what they were before they got broken.”

“That’s amazing, Curly Q,” Ted says, and Quentin grins. It’s a wonderful thing, to feel his father’s pride in him. It’s not something he’d ever thought he’d have again.

“I can show you, sometime, maybe. If– If I can do magic here? I don’t really know.”

“Don’t look at me, I don’t know how these things work. But I’d love to see it, when you find me again.”

“Find you again?” Quentin asks, and the little pocket of happiness he’d been nurturing begins to fade. “You’re not coming with me?”

“I can’t, buddy. But I’ll see you again, when you’re ready.”

“I have so much to tell you,” Quentin protests, but Ted just shakes his head, holding out a hand for Quentin to shake. 

“Then find me after,” He says. Quentin hesitates, then reaches out, takes his father’s hand.

When he pulls away, there’s something in his palm. Looking down, he sees a miniature airplane, like the one he’d repaired over a year ago, but much smaller. Small enough to fit into the center of his palm. The little propeller turns, when he brushes it with his thumb, and he looks up at his father, question on his lips. It dies there, as he watches Ted Coldwater smile, and fade from sight.

He stands there, in the silence of the empty infinite room, staring at the place where his father had been. Grief pulls at his heart, and Quentin sucks in a breath, looking around.

“Fuck you!” he yells at the Library, just for good measure, and then tucks the plane into the pocket of his hoodie. He starts walking again, but only because what else is he supposed to do?

Time doesn’t really feel like it exists in the Underworld. The longer he walks, the less sure he is of how long he’s been walking. It feels like less time than the first time, when he finally becomes aware of another figure, but he can’t really be sure. He turns towards the figure automatically, but once he gets close enough to see her, he freezes, stopping short. 

Arielle stands there, dressed in a light linen summer dress, her long copper hair braided over the side of her shoulder. She’s got her hands clasped in front of her, clearly waiting for him, and the moment he meets her eyes, a grin bursts over her face.

“Hello, my love,” She says, and her _voice._

He knows her voice. Oh, oh, oh he _knows her voice._

“Ari,” he breathes, and it’s like his joints unlock, and he’s stumbling towards her, scooping her into his arms, into a kiss that’s helpless and wild. He’d– oh, this wonderful, wonderful girl, he’d been afraid in his darkest moments that she was never real. But she was, she _is,_ she’s laughing as he spins her around on the spot, her arms around his neck as he kisses her again because this is his _wife._

“Arielle,” he says again, because saying her name feels so good, seeing her is _wonderful._ “I can’t believe you here.”

“Of course I am,” she says, patient, and her eyes are welling up despite the grin on her face. “Quentin, where else would I be?”

“I don’t know, I have no idea what’s going on. I never do,” he says, laughing a little, because she knows this better than anyone. Oh, he _missed her_ , he wasn’t even sure she was real and he missed her so much. 

“Your hair is so short,” she says, smiling through her happy tears, reaching up to cup his face, brush her fingers through the short strands near his ears. “Oh, Eliot must hate this.”

It’s like a knife, jabbing through the side of his ribcage. _Eliot doesn’t give a shit about my hair,_ he thinks, and it’s unfair, really. Mostly because Eliot hasn’t really had the chance to have an opinion about _anything_ recently. But even if Eliot’s never run his finger through Quentin’s hair in this life, doesn’t mean he wouldn’t care. He’s always cares. That was what made it so fucking hard to _move on._

“You’re so much younger than I hoped you’d be.” Arielle’s voice is wistful, thumbs brushing against the corners of his eyes, and he can’t stop looking at her. He remembers the first time she walked by the mosaic, what she’d looked like dancing in the spring, her pale drawn face as illness took her.

“I’m younger than I was when I married you,” he laughs, weakly, and it’s so weird, everything about this is so weird. “But I also feel about 90 years old.”

He tips his head down against her shoulder, feels the soft familiarity of her, revels in it. She still smells like peach blossoms and rosemary, somehow, even in death. In that moment, she’s the most solid thing in the world. The memories of her are clearer than they’ve ever been– the way she’d laughed the day he kissed her for the first time, the pretty blue of her wedding dress when Eliot tied their hands, the orange of her hair as she leaned into Eliot’s side next to the fire with the newborn baby in her arms... 

“I’m so tired, Ari,” he whispers, and feels the hot prickle of his eyes, doesn’t bother to try to hold them back because he’s fucking dead, he can cry if he wants to. “I’ve been fighting for so long. I just want to rest.”

“I know, my love.” Her fingers scratch lightly at the hair on the back of his neck, and that’s not _fair_ , that’s a move she’d learned from Eliot that made him absolutely weak. “I have to admit, I was worried you’d follow me sooner. I’m glad you didn’t.”

He almost had. With the new clarity of those memories, he knows now that the year after she’d died was the darkest point in that version of his life. It’s been maybe eclipsed, now, because she’d _died_ but at least her body hadn’t followed him around, strangling and mangling and demanding from him after. 

“I had to stay for Teddy,” he says into the soft skin of her neck, because that had been what Eliot told him, hadn’t it. _Your fucking son needs you, Coldwater, if nothing else is enough to keep you here, that better be._

“I’m glad you did, Quentin. I know you and Eliot raised him to be a good man. I know how big our family got.”

“God, I don’t even know that,” Quentin laughs wetly, and it hurts, her smile hurts. How can he possibly tell her there wasn’t a spare moment to check and see if it was actually _real_ , hopping from crisis to crisis. Seeing her again, it feels more real than anything. “I was too young to be a widow, Ari.”

“You both were,” she says, mournfully, and she’s always been like this, viewed them as a matched set. “He’ll grieve you now. I think that’ll be harder on him than losing me was.”

The laugh that bubbles up is caustic, bitter. “I don’t. He’ll miss me, sure, but– We’re not like that, now. Eliot... didn’t want me, when he had a choice.”

A dark cloud passes over her face. “Like he didn’t want you when you were 28, or when you were 30, when he pushed you at me because he was scared. Quentin, how many times in our lives did Eliot run away from things that he wanted so much they scared him?”

It probably shouldn’t feel like a revelation, but it does. It’s like a lightbulb coming on, the way Eliot was those first couple weeks after the mosaic, like he was drawn to Quentin but trying to keep him at arm's length. Thoughtlessly adjusting his hair and clothes or fussing over him in the way that he’d learned to do in their life together, and then sending him away the moment Quentin got pulled back into the warmth of his personality. “Oh,” he says, weakly, and Arielle pets his hair, wearing the look she always got on her face when they were being particularly stupid. 

“He’s not him if he doesn’t love you, honey,” she says gently, and what felt like possibility on the playground ( _peaches and plums, motherfucker_ ) feels like ash in his mouth now.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says, petulant, god, he sounds like Teddy. “I’m dead now, and anyway– I was with– I didn’t– I had _nothing to hold on to_ , and no reason to wait. So...”

“Alice?” Arielle guesses, because she’s his _wife_ and she _knows him_ , better than anyone besides, well. Eliot. 

He nods. “There was a moment, where... I looked at her, it felt like I remembered who I was. I’m so tired, Ari, I just wanted to _feel something._ ”

“What do you feel when you look at me,” she asks, tilting her head. It makes her soft copper hair swing, makes him think of spring flowers and their wedding arch.

“I feel hopeful. Like– like I want to start a life, right now, right this second.”

“What do you feel when you look at Eliot?”

_Anger._ But that’s... not true, really, is it. He’s spend months _longing_ to just have Eliot back at his side. “I feel stable, like I’ve got an anchor. Like I can fight through anything, because he’s th-there.” His voice breaks on the last word, and Arielle hushes him, draws his hot face down to her shoulder so he can spill his tears there.

“What do you feel when you look at Alice?” she asks, patient.

“Regret,” he mutters, into her soft linen dress. “That things didn’t go better.” She just hums, doesn’t say anything else. Doesn’t need too. She’s made her point. Swallowing against the lump in his throat, Quentin clings to her, feels her familiar body in his arms. 

“I’ve never loved anyone the way I loved you,” he whispers, because it’s _true_. He loved Alice, _loves_ Eliot still in a way he wants to carry with him into eternity. And he _can_ , now, she’s given him that back, like she’s given him Eliot back over and over again. But none of them were his wife. The mother of his son.

“I’m waiting for you,” she whispers, and then draws back, cups her hands around his cheeks. Her thumbs brush against the tear tracks there. “I’ll be here when you’re ready for me. Our hands are tied, our souls are bound. Don’t forget that.”

“Ari– Eliot and I got married. After you died, Teddy tied our hands in the Orchard.”

She smiles, bright. “I know. He told me. Quentin, your soul and Eliot’s were bound before you were _born_ on Earth.”

That thought was just too... monumental to process. “Can’t I go with you now?” he asks, because the idea of losing her again felt like having a rib yanked out. 

“No, my love. You don’t have a passcard yet. But I’m always with you.” She takes his hand, squeezes it, and when she pulls away he’s left holding a sprig of rosemary braided through with peach blossoms. 

“Arielle,” he says, desperately, looks up just in time to see her smile, and then fade just as his father had.

He collapses to the shiny fucking Underworld floor and cries for a long, long time. 

He keeps trying to convince himself to get up. If the journey were over, Penny would reappear, he’s absolutely sure of that. There’s more to find in this place, but he’s exhausted from the crying and drained from seeing Arielle and his father. What more can he possibly be asked to face, without any time to rest. 

It doesn’t matter that he can’t stand, apparently. Maybe he could have stayed put all along and they would have found him anyway. But he becomes aware of the third figure approaching, and tries to brace himself for whatever this might be.

“Hey, Dad.”

Quentin’s heart catches in his throat, and braced or not he wasn’t ready for this. He knows that voice. Knows it better than he knew Arielle’s, which had felt written on the inside of his ribcage. He makes himself turn, makes himself look up into the face of his son, as a middle-aged man, smiling at him. Teddy Coldwater-Waugh offers out his hand to pull him up, and Quentin draws in a deep shuddering breath. Takes it.

They’re almost of a height, once Quentin’s standing, and he can’t make himself stop staring, drinking in the details of his son’s appearance. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes that match Quentin’s, the way his smile shone like Arielle’s. 

“Hey, Teddy,” Quentin breathes, and then he’s reaching out, grabbing Teddy and pulling him into a tight hug. The memories of the mosaic are still clear, and he remembers the first time he ever held Teddy in his arms, remembers hugging him the day he left home, remembers wrapping brittle arms around him when he’d come by after Eliot–

_My son_ , he thinks, and still can’t wrap his mind around the immensity of that thought. It’s a love bigger than anything else, the kind of thing that rewrote your DNA. “I can’t believe you’re here,” he whispers, and then draws back, getting a hold of Teddy’s face to look him over again.

“It’s pretty unusual, I gather, here. Sending children to greet their parents.”

“Our family’s always been pretty unusual,” Quentin points out, and Teddy grins. 

“It’s the best way to be,” he says with surety, and he might have Arielle’s smile but that irreverence, oh, that’s all Eliot. 

“It worked, the plan, with Margo’s wedding, you– someone sent her a letter,” Quentin rushes to say, because there had to be some explanation, didn’t there? Why he’s standing here looking younger than his fully grown son.

“Ella,” Teddy says, surely, and Quetnin’s heart cracks, at the mention of his youngest grandchild. “She’s still alive, you know? Raining hell upon a whole village.”

“Of course she is,” Quentin laughs, and he remembers the day she was born, the way Eliot had held her, arms not as strong as they’d once been but strong enough to hold the little girl named for him. “She took after your mother, smarter than anyone else around her and not afraid to show it.” 

Teddy laughs, and that’s familiar too. Quentin’s known that laugh in every stage of its existence, little bright baby giggles and awkward teenage snorts, and the deep richness of it now. 

“I figured that, when I died and you weren’t here, something must have happened with the time key,” Teddy muses, turning and starting to walk while he talks. Quentin follows, falling into step beside him.

“Margo got to us before we went into the clock. We didn’t remember any of it until we went back to Fillory. We weren’t sure if it had actually happened, for a while.” Quentin swallows, and he can’t stop looking over at Teddy, drinking him in. “I wish I’d taken more time to– I could have gone to see Ella. Except, everything kept _happening_ , and then Eliot–”

He cuts himself off, but Teddy’s already caught it, shooting a curious look over at him. “How is Papa?”

_Papa._ Fuck. 

“I don’t know,” Quentin admits, and his stomach turns. “He– it wasn’t good, Ted. He was bleeding out last time I saw him. I never got to– But if you haven’t see him, that’s got to be a good sign, right? I mean, I don’t think he has anyone else to come for him, besides you and your mom and– me, I guess.”

“Maybe. Not everyone has this,” Teddy says, mildly, and he looks thoughtfully around the echoey library room as he walks. “I didn’t, really. Neither did my wife. We just– stayed in limbo, waiting for each other, and then passed on.”

“Who died first?” Quentin asks, and it hurts to think about, Teddy being dead, his sparky black-haired wife being gone from the world, the closest Quentin would ever know to having a daughter. “You or Lyza?”

“Me,” Teddy says, and his smile is sad for a moment. “I’d have chosen it that way, if I could. I never had to mourn her.”

“Yeah, I–” Quentin swallows, thinks of the Monster wearing Eliot’s skin, of burying him, of burying Arielle. “I get that.”

They walk in silence for a couple more minutes, Teddy looking around the empty room with curiosity. “What is this place, anyway?”

“The uh. The Underworld Branch of the Library of the Neitherlands.” 

Teddy, who’d grown up hearing stories about the fight with the Beast and start of the Key Quest, lets out a soft _oh_ of understanding. “I wonder why you’re here, not in a waiting space.”

“I think I died under– unusual circumstances.” Quentin hesitates, because this isn’t the kind of stuff you usually put on your child, but– Teddy wasn’t a child, really any more. “I had some stuff I needed to figure out.”

“Like what?” Teddy asks, stopping in his tracks to look at Quentin, head tilted curiously.

“Like– If my life had any meaning, in the end.” He laughs, once, choked, aborted, and it _hurts._ His eyes prickle, again, and he’s so damn tired of crying. “If it went anywhere important after all.”

Teddy smiles, and Quentin’s reminded again that the version of his child he’s looking at is older than him, really. “I may be your son,” Teddy starts, and he is, _he is_ , Quentin can see it in every line of his face. “–but I raised children too. So I’m going to tell you what I would tell them, a lesson I learned from my own fathers: Life isn’t about the destination, it’s about the journey.”

“Oh,” Quentin says, weakly, because yeah, he’d known that once, hadn’t he? Had figured out before he died the 40th time that _the beauty of all life_ was just life. To live and to love and to experience it all with an open heart. In that version of reality, he’d been ready to go, when his time came, not because darkness was eating him alive, but because he’d lived a full, rich life.

Could he really say that now? Was he really, _really_ done?

_How’s Papa? I don’t know._

Could he really move on, not knowing? Not _knowing,_ that Eliot was fine, that he was alive, what the fuck he’d _meant_ with “peaches and plums, motherfucker.” Could he move on, not knowing if there was a chance, a _chance_ , to live a good full life again? Even if– Just to have Eliot at his side again, his _best fucking friend_ , no matter what– _I miss him,_ Quentin thinks, and fuck, he’s been missing Eliot since he stopped being Brian, months and months of fighting. 

They walk in silence for a couple more moments, before Quentin catches sight of the doorway with a start. “Am I done?” he asks, looking with a little uncertainty towards Teddy.

“Do you know where you’re headed?” Teddy asks, and Quentin lets out a wet laugh. 

“The only place I want to go is _home,_ ” he chokes, thinks of Eliot and Julia and Margo and Alice. “I want to keep _living_ and I don’t think that’s an option.”

“Well.” Teddy tilts his head, and again it floors Quentin how much his mannerisms speak of Eliot. “Did you ask?”

“What? I– No? Can I just ask?”

“Well, you’ll never know if you don’t try,” Teddy says reasonably, and Quentin laughs, can’t help himself. His son, forever the trouble-maker, smart as his mother, oh, Teddy.

“I was so lucky,” Quentin says seriously, gripping the side of Teddy’s arm. “I was so lucky to be your father. I love you so much.”

Just like that, Teddy looks younger, closer to the boy who’d left home to seek adventure. “I know, Dad. I love you, too.”

He comes in when Quentin reaches out to hug him, and Quentin tries to hold onto the memory, this precious chance to say goodbye. He pulls back, and smiles at Teddy, a new found determination growing in his heart. “I’ll find you when I’m ready.”

“Yes, you will,” Teddy agrees, holding out his hand. Quentin, who knows what to expect by now, reaches out and takes the small object Teddy passes along. It’s a Fillorian compass, the same kind he’d taken with him when he’d left home. It tugs at Quentin’s heart, but he smiles at his son, one last time.

“Goodbye, Teddy,” He says, and means, _for now_ , and means _for quite a while._ Then he turns, before Teddy can start to fade, and pushes open the door.

The door deposits him back outside the Secrets entrance, and Penny’s waiting for him with that stupid smile on his face.

“Welcome back,” he says mildly, and opens the door, gesturing Quentin back into his office.

Feeling wrung out and exhausted, but clutching tightly to that new burning sense of determination, Quentin follows him. The room is still the same dull gray numbness as it had been before, but it feels even more wrong, now. Like somehow Quentin had been halfway into fading into the grayness himself and now he’s broadcasting full color again. 

“Did you find the answers to your questions?” Penny asks, as the door closes behind them, and Quentin grips that determination closer, steels himself.

“Yes,” he says, with as much purpose as he can muster. “I know where I’m supposed to go. Send me back.”

Penny blinks, stunned silent, then says politely, “Excuse me?”

“Back home, back to timeline 40, back to my friends. That’s where I’m supposed to be. Send me back.”

“You can’t– just go _back_ ,” Penny says incredulously, the most emotive he’s been thus far.

“Well, then I’m not going anywhere,” Quentin says, and hops up to sit on Penny’s desk. Grins at him, and pointedly starts singing Taylor Swift loudly in his head. “Hello, roomie.”

Apparently there’s not much you can do to force someone to move on, when their heart is set against it. Maybe the Library relies on sheer boredom to do most of the work for them, because there really isn’t much to do around here, besides annoy Penny. Even that’s only mildly entertaining, mostly because he’s got this emotionless grim reaper shit buttoned down tight.

So Quentin hangs around a lot. He doesn’t feel hungry, really, so he doesn’t eat. He doesn’t really feel tired, either, but he does sleep some just because it’s nice to do. He dreams of the mosaic a couple times, Eliot and Arielle and Teddy sprawled out across colorful tiles. Other times he dreams of the Physical Kids Cottage, Margo and Eliot and Alice drinking bright green cocktails, carefree and happy. Another time still he dreams of the condo in midtown, Julia and the endless void of need that was the Monster. He sleeps less, after that.

After a few days, or months, or years spent as a guest of the Library Underworld, Penny corners him in a hallway. Quentin had been on his way to find some more elastic bands, as he’s been building a rubber band ball and had run out. Literally, undeath? So boring.

“You still want to climb out of here?”

“Yes,” Quentin says immediately, sticking his hands in his pockets where he can feel his father’s plane, and Arielle’s rosemary sprig, and Teddy’s compass. 

“It’s going to be hard,” Penny warns, his gaze weirdly intense and serious.

“God, yeah, I figured it would be,” Quentin mutters, squirming out of Penny’s personal space. “Everything from pretty much every mythology ever says it’s a pain in the ass.”

“You can’t turn back,” Penny says, voice hushed like he’s giving Quentin fucking... insider information or something. “You turn back even once and you lose your chance.”

“Okay,” Quentin agrees. “Forward always, always forward.”

“I feel like that’s a reference to something I don’t know, and honestly I don’t even care. If you want to do this, follow me.”

Quentin follows him.

Penny takes him to another fucking shiny black door. “If there’s another infinity room in there, I’m going to break something,” Quentin warns, and Penny rolls his eyes.

“It’s not,” He intones, and then his brow creases. 

Quentin stares at the door, and just a little bit of apprehension shades through the determination beating where his heart should be. “Why now?” he has to ask, though, because Penny had been pretty clear on this. You didn’t just get to go back. “Why are you letting me try now?”

“If you get to the end, you’ll know,” Penny says, cryptically. There’s a beat, and then he says, “I’m not supposed to have opinions on the outcome of things like this, but. I hope you get through this to the other side.”

“Because you’re sick of having me in your office?”

“I’m really sick of having you in my office,” Penny agrees, and then unexpectedly he moves in for a hug. Quentin gives it, because well. He was lucky enough to have a friend be his Underworld reaper. How many people get that lucky?

“Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Quentin breathes, and rounds on the door. “Don’t turn back, not even once.”

“Not even once,” Penny agrees, and then pushes the door open. 

He’d have expected to find himself in another endless room, not matter what Penny says, but the shiny black door opens into a clean, clinical hallway, exactly like every other clean, clinical hallway in the Library. _You might consider a jewel tone or two,_ says a voice in Quentin’s mind, which sounds exactly like Eliot and it makes him smile to himself, soft and private. He doesn’t even know what a jewel tone is, but it’s enough to send him forward with a little bit of excitement. He’s going _towards_ something, something he wants more than he’d ever thought he could want it.

_Life._

The first stretch of hallway is long and straight and featureless, and Quentin fights the itch to run, because it’s not actually going to get him there any faster. He’s dealt with the library enough to know they’re more into mind games than physical spaces. The hallway way ends in a T intersection, leaving him with two choices: left, or right.

Twisting to look both ways, there’s no real discernible difference. Seized with a bit of whimsy, he sniffs the air. If he tries hard enough, he thinks maybe the right hallway smells cleaner.

“ _If in doubt, Meriadoc, always follow your nose,_ ” Quentin quotes to himself, under his breath. _Nerd_ , accuses a Margo in his brain, like she hasn’t read the books too, and Quentin smiles, lets his feet carry him right. 

Maybe he hums the _Ride of the Roherum_ to himself as he walks, but literally no one is going to know about it, so Quentin lets whimsy win just this once. He still feels technicolor in a sepia world, and he deserves some goddamn questing music. The hallway comes to an end eventually, presenting him with another T intersection.

“Don’t turn back,” he mutters to himself, and hangs left this time. 

Okay, so _this_ is the maze, the labyrinth he’d railed at before. Well. Penny really had given him some good advice, hadn’t he? Never turn back. It was more literal than mythology made it out to be, possibly. Just keep choosing alternate paths so you never doubled back on yourself. That sounded easy enough, if he could keep track of it.

Seized with a moment of inspiration, he reaches into his pocket, pulling out his father’s plane. Left turn this time, so he puts the plane in his left hand. At the next intersection, he turns left again, because hatch-backing right constantly doesn’t seem productive. The intersection after that, he turns right again, and switches the hand holding the plane. 

The next path that crosses his is not a T intersection, but a 4 way connection. Left, right, or straight.

_Forward always._

Well. If he’s going to make a plan, he might as well fucking stick to it. He continues onwards down the straight path, ignoring both side corridors. His shoes squeak a little on the over polished floor of the maze, and he briefly entertains the thought of whose job it was to come down and _wax the floors_ of the literal labyrinth.

“Just don’t make me fight a minotaur alone, yeah? That seems unfair when I’m not actual a demigod,” Quentin says aloud, because the silence is fucking boring. 

Except– Someone answers. 

“Oh, Quentin, I don’t think that’s the kind of Beast you need to worry about.”

It’s like a ice shot of adrenaline, and fuck. Quentin’s never had a fight or flight reflex, he has fucking _freeze_ , he freezes where he stands as around the corner left corner of the next intersection steps the buzzing monstrocity which is The Beast of Fillory. 

_Run_ , screams Quentin’s brain, and he almost does, almost turns and books it, except.

_Don’t turn back_. 

He swallows, and makes himself stand his ground. “Hello, Martin.”

“My, my, aren’t we familiar,” The Beast drawls, the heavy resonant overtones of his magically affected voice practically vibrate in Quentin’s skull.

“Yes, well. I think I’ve earned it after 40 timelines,” he quips back with a bravado he doesn’t feel, even a little bit. “But I’m dead now though, so, guess you got your wish.”

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself, I never cared about killing you, except you kept getting between me and the traveler. Though, I hear he’s dead too, so perhaps you’re right.”

“If you don’t care about me then why are you here?” Quentin asks, gripping his father’s plane in his hand. He’d have to drop it to reach for battle magic, and somehow that seems like the most catastrophically foolish thing he could do right now.

“Well, what you’re trying to do right now simply cannot be allowed, you see. People like us don’t get to _come back._ ”

“People _like us?_ ” Quentin spits, and feels revolt clawing at the back of his neck. 

Martin Chatwin waves a lazy hand in front of his face and his moths disperse, leaving only his human face. He clasps his hands behind his back, strolling towards Quentin, explaining as if to a child: “We’re a like, you and me. Lost, hurt little boys who wanted to hide in Fillory forever, but found it... so disappointing. Don’t you think?”

Quentin’s stomach roils. “We’re _nothing_ alike.”

“Oh, aren't we?” Martin chuckles, and Quentin’s skin is _crawling_ , he’s had literal nightmares about this. “In another timeline, you _became_ me. Or don’t you remember where your precious key came from? We’re birds of a feather, really. We both know you love things so hard they break, Quentin.”

He nearly flinches, and that urge to turn and run flares up again, every survival instinct screaming to get away, _get away._ But he can still feel his father’s plane, pushing indents into the soft meat of his palm. “It doesn’t matter if I break things,” he says softly, and he’s practically shaking with fear and hurt and heartache. In his mind's eye he can see Eliot crouched in front of a crying 5 year old boy, soothing his hair. “It doesn’t matter if I break things as long as I fix them.”

“Do you really believe that?” Martin asks, sardonic, and Quentin swallows. Finds that, to his own surprise, he does believe it.

“Yes,” he says, chin tilting up defiantly. “I fix things. It’s what I do best. And if they keep breaking then I have to keep fixing them. I don’t want to give up just because it’s _hard._ ”

“Oh but you’ve wanted to give up your whole life, Quentin. We are in hell, after all, what secrets do you think you have from yourself?”

_From yourself_. It’s like a lightbulb going off. 

_All that's in this maze is me,_ he realizes, staring into Martin Chatwin, the personification of what he fears he could become. “What are you doing here, Martin?” He repeats, standing a little straighter. 

Martin sighs, like Quentin’s taken all the fun out of the game. “You need to pay tolls, to get out of the Underworld, you daft little boy. I am simply here to collect.”

“Tolls?” Quentin’s heart sinks. He doesn’t have anything to offer besides the clothes on his back and– 

_Oh._

Oh, that’s not fucking fair. How much is going to be _taken from him_ , how many times does he have to lose the people he loves? 

But they’re not lost. Not really. Each of them had promised to see him again. And they weren’t the only people he loved, were they? Julia lay in front of him, past Martin and whatever hell the library had razed besides him. Margo lay that way, and Alice and– And Eliot lay that way, _through, onward, forward._

Forward always.

Maybe there was some metaphor involved after all. 

Gritting his teeth, Quentin reached out to hand Martin Chatwin his father’s plane. Martin takes in a six fingered hand, which still make Quentin feel vaguely nauseous.

“Ta,” Martin says sardonically, clicking his heels together sharply and giving a crisp little bow. “Until we meet again, Quentin.”

“Fucking never, please,” Quetnin mutters, and watches as Martin, too, slowly fades. 

The corridor is ringingly empty without the projection of the Beast, and Quentin finds himself more unnerved by it than he had been before. He cautiously steps up to the intersection, glancing around. It seems like all the others, plain and empty and grey.

“Did he appear because I talked? Because let’s get this shit over with now, if that’s why,” Quentin calls out, looking around the characterless Library halls. Nothing appears. “Of course not.”

He sighs, looking left and then right. Well. Martin had come from the left, and Quentin has no desire to follow in his footsteps, so he chooses the right path. Reaching into the pocket of his hoodie, he pulls out Arielle’s sprig of rosemary, and cups it loosely in his right hand. 

The monotony of the hallways become dully repetitive before long. He has his pattern and he sticking to it. Left, right, right, left, right, left, left, right, and any straight-away he can possible take. When his feet get tired, he sits in the middle of the alway, facing forward, until he doesn’t feel tired anymore, and then continues on.

_Who knew death could be so boring,_ he wonders to himself, but really. Anyone who’s dealt with the Library at all could probably make that guess. Who decided they got to be in charge of this anyway?

Except not all of the Underworld was like this, was it? Teddy had said as much, and Quentin had seen it himself, chasing Julia’s shade. Even bowling sounded appealing right now, finger-breaking incidents or not. 

“My take away from this whole thing is that you’re best off if you die in such a boring way the Library doesn’t care about your story,” Quentin calls out, as he turns left into another corridor.

No one replies this time.

He sighs, and continues on. 

It lulls him into a false sense of security. Of course it fucking does. He rounds the next left turn thinking not about the maze, but about shades, and Persephony’s house in Elysium full of lost children. There, standing eerily quiet in the middle of the hallway, is Alice.

He’s lucky his startle reflex sends him slamming sideways into the wall, really, not backwards down the hallway. 

“Jesus, Alice!” He gasps out, and she rolls her eyes at him, tilting her head in that inhuman way and looking at him over her glasses.

Oh, fuck, not Alice. The Niffin.

“You couldn’t even die right, could you, Quentin?” she sneers, blue crackling across the skin of her face. 

“You’re not real, you’re just a projection of my brain,” he mutters to himself, and she rolls her eyes.

“What makes something real, really? No one could see me when I was stuck inside your meat suit, but that didn’t stop me from nearly driving you crazy. And then you let me out, and _ripped me out of the universe_. I wasn’t hurting anyone, and you _stuck me inside a body_.”

“Don’t you think I’ve paid enough for that?” Quentin mutters, and he wants to push past her, continue down the hallway, but he can’t seem to make himself move closer to her. 

“Oh, Quentin. If you’d paid enough for what you did to me, you’d be trapped in a box somewhere, screaming while every inch of your magic is ripped out of you.”

His head throbs. “You’re the one who gave magic away to the Library.”

“Because _you_ stuck a shade in me,” she shrieks, and he flinches as blue energy melts off her face like lightning. “Really, it’s all your fault. All of it. If you’d let me stay like I was, then I wouldn’t have had to make a deal. Magic would have come back like you wanted, and Eliot–”

“ _Don’t,_ ” Quentin hisses, and knows immediately he’s handed her a bomb.

“Oh, you don’t want to hear about how everything that’s happened to him is your fault? It is, Quentin. He told you no, so you stuck a Monster in his body and let it try to kill him for months.”

“I _tried_ to help him–”

“The same way you tried to help me?” Alice laughs, incredulous, and it’s awful, it’s an awful sound, inhuman and jarring. “Because you _wanted him back_? You like to think you’re a good person, Quentin, but you’re selfish. You always were so selfish. You pined after the boy who turned you down, then let a Monster run roughshod over his body, and you _still_ think you deserve to be with him. Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that you turned around and climbed back into _my lap_ in the meantime. You don’t get to have both.”

It’s like a slap in the face, when the memories of the mosaic are still so fresh, the softness of Arielle’s hair and the feeling of Eliot’s solid chest at his back. He rubs his thumb along a leaf of the rosemary sprig and tries to think. Does he want both? Alice and Eliot? Is that why he was all tied in knots?

No. _Your souls were bound before you were born, on Earth_. Arielle, his _wife_ , and Eliot... the love of his life. That was never going to work a second time. “I can’t change what I did to you,” Quentin says quietly. “And I don’t think you’d want me too, now, if you were really Alice. And I can’t change what the Monster did to Eliot, even if it was my fault. But I can be there to help him pick up the pieces. I owe him that much. I owe it to him to try to fix this.”

“Selfish,” Alice spits, and maybe. Maybe in this he is, in some ways. But in a lot of other ways, he’s learned not to be selfish with love. He just never seemed to be able to remember how, when it came to her. Maybe they would always come to this place, every time. Selfless love only came easily to him when it was mirrored back, and Alice wasn’t exactly good at it either.

“I died saving the world, Alice,” He gives a helpless little shrug. “I think maybe I’ve earned the right to be selfish.”

“Of course you do,” She sneers. “It’s honestly amazing anyone can stand to be around you.”

This startles a laugh out of him, and he sighs, scrubbing his free hand over his face. “You know, I’m not gonna fight you on that one. But in this, at least, I have proof of concept. You’re here for a toll, right?”

Alice sniffs, her pointed face turning up like she can barely stand to look at him. “If you’re so determined to subject the world to your idiocy, then yes. A toll is required.”

Quentin rubs the sprig of rosemary and peach blossoms between this fingers once more, and thinks of his wife, of her copper hair in the sun and the loving way she always pushed him to be better. _Goodbye, darling, goodbye for now_ , he thinks desperately, and holds out the little bundle towards Alice. Blue energy crackles across her skin as she takes it.

“Bye, now,” she calls, sardonic, and he watches her fade with a feeling of foreboding. 

Standing in the deserted hallway, he can't help but wonder what the last manifestation he’s going to have to face off with could be. Nervously, he reaches into his pocket for Teddy’s compass. It’s cool to the touch, but the burnished metal warms quickly with his body heat.

It’s reassuring to _have_ body heat. 

Taking comfort from that, he grips the compass in his left hand tightly and continues on.

The pattern of hallways stays much the same, for the longest time, so much so that Quentin begins to doubt himself. Had he made the wrong call? This seems too simple, to just keep cross hatching his way forward, a slogging grind of right, right, left, right, left, left, right. It had to be more complicated than this. Who made a maze entirely composed of 90 degree angles? 

Well. The Order of the Library of the Neitherlands, probably. If anyone was going to lose points for creative expression, it was the Library. But the repetition was becoming part of the maze in and of itself, wasn’t it? That doubt, that seed of worry that he was following the wrong trail was making him want to turn back more than anything other than the sudden appearance of the Beast had, so far. _Don’t turn around, not even once_. But how long was he supposed to just move mindlessly forward? 

He’d lost all sense of time in the maze, stopping to rest when he needed too, and otherwise just pushing onwards. The pattern of the hallways, never changed, _never changed_ , and it’s starting to worry him. 

Until, abruptly, he found himself out of hallway. 

He’s on the second right of a “right, right, left” bit of the maze, and he doesn’t notice that there’s not T intersection at the end until he’s right up on it. But there isn’t, the hallway just _ends._ Panic surges in his stomach, because fuck, fuck, he fucked it up. He picked the wrong path and now he’s staring at a dead end and he can’t turn around, can’t turn back, _not even once._

What the fuck is he supposed to do? Except–

“Dead end. Just like you.”

For a moment, Quentin’s not sure where the voice is coming from, and can’t even place who it might belong too. Except it’s familiar, but not, at the same time. Then, stepping _through the wall_ in front of him, shiny boot first comes– himself.

Hair longer than it is now, and wearing the comfortable and simple dark blue high Fillorian clothes from the boat quest, the echo of Quentin’s depression steps into the hallway to face him. He’s got that same condescending look on his face, and Quentin _hates_ it. God, he fucking hates even looking in the mirror, half the time, he doesn’t want to stand toe to toe with himself and fight his way out of the Underworld.

Of course. Of course this would be the final test.

“You didn’t really think they were going to let you _leave_ , did you?” sneers the echo, and the dread of it slots in right next to the panic. But he’s done this, he’s _done this so many times_ , he knows this fight.

“I know you, asshole. I got through this once before.”

“Only because you let someone else die for you. Because you’re _weak._ ”

Quentin flinches. But none of this is new, none of these are thoughts he hasn’t worked his way through before. “Yeah, you can’t actually blame me for this one, I was tied to a pole.”

“You were tied to a pole because you couldn’t handle–”

“I _was handling it_ ,” Quentin snaps, and he’s over this. He’s over this whole fucking test, this whole fucking maze, he’s _done_ with the Underworld and the Library and all their burocratic bullshit. “Just tell me how to get out of here.”

“Why?” mocks the echo, tilting its head. “You've spent your whole life trying to die. What makes you think it's going to be any different now? You'll be back here soon anyway, you know that. Why go to all this trouble when you know you're not going to live past 30?

“I did once. With Eliot–”

“Eliot doesn't want you. He told you he'd never choose you if he has a choice. You’re going to stake your whole life on the _chance_ that he was lying?” 

Quentin winces, and looks away, down to the shiny tile floor of the Library hall. This mental loop isn’t any more fun to run through out loud than it is inside his head. But– But the reality is, he almost doesn’t care anymore if he never gets back what he had at the mosaic. That life has already been lived, and the remnants of it are _here_ , the place he’s trying to leave. That’s not what he’s chasing now. 

“It doesn't matter if he wants to fuck me or not,” Quentin says, and he’s almost surprised how much he means it. “He cares about me, I know he does. He shot the monster because he didn't want to live without me. You don’t do that for someone you’re going to turn away when they need you. He cares enough to help me if I ask.”

“And what if it's not enough?” 

Quentin exhales, holding his arms out from his sides in a gesture of surrender. “Then I'll be back, I guess. But if I have chance to fix this then I have to take it. I grew old once. I raised a son, and loved someone for my whole life. I want to do that again, as this version of myself.”

“What could you possibly hope to accomplish?” Quentin hates the way his own face looks when he smiles like that, but he makes himself look, stare into the echo’s eyes. “You played the hero, you saved the world. You got the girl, for whatever that’s worth to you. You’ve got nothing left to _do_ , Quentin.”

It’s his darkest fear spoken allowed, that his life would be meaningless, empty and pointless. The niggling worry he’d felt at first, sitting down in Penny’s office. Was it better to go out now, when he knows he died for doing something heroic? _Did what I did with my time matter, in the end?_ But that was the whole point, wasn’t it? That ‘in the end’ wasn’t what really matters. 

“Life isn’t about the destination,” Quentin repeats, brushing his thumb against Teddy’s compass before holding it out, clinging to the last ounce of determination he has. “It’s about the journey. I’m not _done yet._ There’s still so much living to be done.”

The echos sighs, over dramatic and put-upon– _Jesus, why does anyone want to be around me when I’m such an annoying little twit?_ But when he shoves the compass forward again, the echo takes it, snatches it out of his hands.

Just like that, the echo fades, and so does the wall he’d stepped through. In front of Quentin stretches the long, long expanse of more hallway, but–

That was it, right? He was out of tokens, so he must be close to the end. The merry excitement he’d felt at the start of the maze is gone, replaced only with the grim determination to finish. Get to the end of the fucking maze, and get out of the goddamn Underworld, and go find his friends. Start to _fix_ all the things that are broken. There’s another flash of worry, that he’ll arrive too late, that Eliot won’t be–

But he can’t think about that. Needs to focus on the positive possibilities, or he’s never going to find the will to keep moving forward. He drags it up, and it’s painful, it hurts like pulling a tooth, but he manages it. Finds the courage to keep pushing on.

Next left, he thinks.

Just gotta take the next left, and then– a right after that, but.

There’s no next left. The hallway seems to stretch on and on and on and on.

“This is _ridiculous_ ,” he calls out to the maze, like that’s going to matter at all. It doesn’t.

He keeps walking. 

It feels like it takes days for there to be a change in the scenery. Just forward, onward, pressing on. But all things must end, and apparently crawling out of the Underworld is one of those things. At the end of the long hallway is another T intersection, which he should theoretically go left at, and standing there waiting is–

Penny.

“Hello again, Quentin,” Penny says, smirking in that same self-satisfied way. Jesus, what was it about death that had made him so _goddamn smug_. None of the others had been like that. Maybe it was just what the Library did to a person. “Ready to pay the final toll?”

Quentin’s stomach drops. “The fin– _what?_ I thought it was done.”

“Not quite yet. There’s four check points on the maze out of the Underworld. You did a very good job not getting lost, by the way. That trick with your hands? Clever. But this is the last checkpoint, so we need one final item before you can leave.”

"I don't," he swallows, feeling helpless, hopeless. He’d come all this way. _All this way,_ and he was stuck here because, what? Because he only had three people waiting for him in the afterlife? "I don't have anything else to offer."

"We do."

It’s a familiar voice, female and husky. Quentin spins around to the left, towards the path he had to take, heart slamming in his chest to see- oh Jesus.

Margo, in a puffy magenta coat and the crown of the High King on her brow. Julia, Our Lady of The Tree, golden magic made physical. Alice, sharp and pressed and collected in a skirt and heels. And... Eliot. Eliot as Q's never seen him, monster-long hair slicked back and wearing a black suit, black shirt, black tie, holding a familiar black and silver cane. 

"Four check-points? We've got four tolls, bitch," Margo hisses, and holds out the silver circle of his Fillorian crown, which she'd placed on his head years ago. Next to her, Julia holds out a deck of playing cards, face up on the king of hearts. Alice, face tight, holds forward a book with silver script on the cover which reads ' _The Book Of Quentin Coldwater._ ' Eliot, from the pocket of his long dark coat, pulls– a peach. 

_50 years. Who gets proof of concept like that? Peaches and plums, motherfucker._

“We were coming to Orpheus and Eurydice your ass out of here, but looks like you got there first,” Julia says, smiling a little, his best friend, his _best friend for his whole life_. He staggers towards her, stalling out at the last moment afraid that if he touches her she might vanish like the others.

“It wouldn’t have worked. No one else can pull you out of the Underworld. But you also can’t get yourself out without help, either,” Penny says, and he’s still got that self-satisfied smile. “You asked me what changed, why I was suddenly willing to let you try? I let you try because they were headed down to meet you. It’s all metaphorical bullshit really, but you need to make the choice to leave on your own, and you need people to help you get all the way out.”

“That’s– fucking insane, how many times can those two circumstances possibly line up?” Quentin wonders, and he hears Julia snort next to him, graceless except she is grace personified.

“Almost never,” Penny admits, still smiling. “If coming back from the dead were easy, people would do it all the time. It only ever happens if your story really isn’t done.” He reaches out, taking Alice’s offering, ‘ _The Book of Quentin Coldwater._ ’ “Speaking of which– This’ll count as the fourth toll. It needs to be re-written anyway.”

“Fuck yeah, it does,” Margo cheers, and rushes him, tackling Quentin into a fluffy pink hug. “You don’t get to leave without the High King’s permission, dickwad.”

“Sorry, your majesty,” he mutters into her coat, hugging her back. She smells like hairspray, and the coat tickles his nose, but it’s maybe the first moment of the whole time he’s known her that she doesn’t scare him. She crawled into the Underworld, for _him_. Oh, how sweet, to be one of the things Margo Hanson cares about.

He pulls away, and Alice is there, nervous and flighty but reaching for him all the same. Quentin’s stomach clenches, because he’s going to break her heart, he _knows he is,_ doesn’t love the idea of it, but looking at her now– He can see with bright clarity that what he’d thought was wanting her was just wanting to _feel alive again_. But she’d come here for him, too. She’d come down here for him and he was going to break her heart. _Oh, Vix, you deserve someone who can love you better than me._

“Hey, Q,” She whispers, and maybe she can read that something isn’t right on his face, because she just goes in for a hug. He gives her that, scoops her up into his arms and hugs her tight. 

“Thank you, Alice,” he whispers into her ear, hugging her as tight as he can manage.

“Of course,” she returns, voice hope bright, and he can tell when she pulls away, she wants to talk to him, to explain– whatever they’d done, after the mirror realm, and he can’t– let her drag it on any longer, squeezes her shoulder and turns to Julia, thinking– _Fuck, Vix, I’m so sorry I did this to you._

Julia hugs him, tight, and she feels so familiar in his arms he almost chokes. "I saw my dad, Jules," he whispers to her. She makes a startled, incredulous sound, squeezing him back, rocking a little in his arms. 

“That’s amazing Q, I’m so glad you did,” she murmurs, and even her voice is light, like golden magic. 

Pulling away from her, Quentin looks over at Eliot, who's hanging back slightly from the little bubble of their reunion, leaning heavily on his black-and-silver ram’s head cane. His eyes are fixed on Quentin, and he looks like maybe he hasn’t blinked at all since they stepped around the corner. "I saw Teddy, El. And Ari, I saw them. They're here, they're _real_ , they're waiting for us. When- the time is right."

Eliot’s face does something complicated, hope and hurt and fear passing over it all at once. “Really?” Quentin nods, biting his lip against the grin trying to push onto his face. Fuck, Eliot looks... so _Eliot-like_ , not an inch of Monster in him. Even pale and drawn from what his body’s been through, he’s still heart stoppingly lovely. He blinks and swallows, nods, processing, and Quentin stops trying not to grin. _Their family was real_. Then Eliot gives him a tentative look and repeats, “When the time is right. Not... now?”

“Not now,” Quentin confirms, and he feels _light_. He goes to Eliot, thoughtless, careless, easy, buries himself in Eliot’s arms. It feels like coming home. “My whole life laid out in front of me, Eliot, and all I could see was the hole in it shaped like you. I _couldn’t die_ without seeing you again.”

“Q,” Eliot breathes, and when Quentin pulls back, he looks painfully, desperately hopeful. “I don’t want you to die _ever_. I never should have made you think– I love you, Q, more than anything else. I’m sorry I couldn’t be braver before.”

Quentin almost laughs, because _Arielle was right_ , like she always fucking was. “You’re brave,” he says, pushing up on his toes to brush their noses together, to whisper against Eliot’s lips, “You climbed into hell for me. That’s pretty fucking brave.”

Kissing Eliot feels like being alive again. Now Quentin’s sure he has a pulse, because it’s racing, and he’s sure he needs to breathe, because his lungs are burning but Eliot. _Eliot._ Eliot’s kissing him back, one hand on the small of his back, the other cradling his neck and this. This is worth living for. Loving someone like this is worth _living for._

Behind them, he can hear Alice make a soft, hurt little noise, and Quentin breaks away, feeling guilty. She’d journeyed into the Underworld for him too, and well. Maybe he doesn’t actively need to be carelessly cruel to her. But he catches sight of Eliot’s face as he pulls back, scared hazel eyes full of awe, and. It’s hard to keep Alice in his mind, faced with Eliot’s entire heart presented to him on a silver platter. 

“Not to stand on your moment,” Margo says, and she’s smiling like she really wants not to be and can’t help herself. Oh, Margo. Quentin wants to hug her again. “But I really don’t want to spend any more time in this soulless fucking hellhole. No offense.”

Her eyes flicker over to Penny, fingers waving a little, and he smirks. Fucking self-satisfied douchebag. “None taken. You really shouldn’t linger much longer,” he says agreeably, and then nods his head behind them. What had been a blank stretch of Underworld hallway is now an elevator door, with the little ‘up’ key on the panel lit up. 

“What did this place look like before elevators were invented?” Eliot asks, slightly sardonic because he has absolutely no sense of self-preservation whatsoever. 

“My understanding is that there were a lot of stairs,” Penny says mildly, and gestures towards the door as it opens. They file in one at a time, but Quentin finds himself hanging back. Eliot pauses in the doorway, his finger hooked in the pocket of Quentin’s hoodie like he’s afraid Quentin might forget to get on with them. 

It’s a reasonable fear, but Quentin has no desire to stay behind.

Still. “Thank you,” he says to Penny, because Underworld Penny maybe be a completely different kind of dickhead then their Penny, but he still helped Quentin get this chance. “For not just sending me on. Thanks for the deluxe package.”

Penny nods, giving Quentin a thoughtful look. “Magicians on Earth love to remind you that magic comes from pain, but they never really get it right,” Penny says, still smiling, self-satisfied, the fucking all-knowing benefactor. “You’re not strong because you feel pain. Everyone feels pain. You’re strong because you learn to push through the pain, and make something of yourself anyway. This is your second chance. There might not be another after this.”

“I think it’s my forty-second chance, actually,” Quentin quips, and there’s that little flash if irritation again. He grins, stepping back into Eliot’s side. He feels Eliot’s arm snake around his waist, protective, sturdy, even if he’s leaning on a cane. _With him by my side, I can do anything._

Penny’s smile tightens. “Get out of here before I change my mind.”

Quentin nods, and flicks his fingers in a half-cocked salute as the elevator doors slide shut.

They rise.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found as portraitofemmy on most places, but check out [twitter](https://twitter.com/portraitofemmy) and [tumblr](https://portraitofemmy.tumblr.com/). Thanks for reading!


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